Summary

The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice is given by the article 3/2 of the European Union Agreement: “The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum, immigration and the prevention and combating of crime.”

The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice is also paid attention to in the Title V of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).

In order to build the area of freedom, security and justice, the Stockholm programme setting the aims and priorities of the European Union (EU) was adopted in 2009.

The topics contained in the Stockholm programme include harmonisation in the area of criminal and civil rights with the cross border elements, fight against organised crime and terrorism, visa policy and security of the external border, finishing of the asylum system and common immigration policy.

The programme was a five-year programme and it will expire by the end of the year 2014; at its meeting in June the European Council, based on the article 68 of the TFEU, will adopt strategic changes to the legislative and operative planning replacing the Stockholm programme for the next term.

At its meeting, the European Council will have to evaluate the existing development in the area and define the key topics for the future.

The emphasis should be on the implementation and advancement of the existing regulations rather than on creation of new legislation.

Our analysis shows that the main cause of extremely low election turnout in the Czech Republic is the lack of knowledge about the EU in general and especially about the role and work of the European Parliament. In a poll by Median, only one in three Czechs can name a single MEP and 86 percent of Czechs state that they don’t know what the EP and MEPs do. (43 percent Slovaks can name two MEPs, only 12 percent Czechs can do so) People do not cast their votes for institution from which they don’t know anybody and have no idea what it is good for.

In last ten years, Czech political parties have undoubtedly failed to explain to its citizen what the EP as a legislative institution exists for. Now, they are only harvesting fruits of their ignorance of EU topics. European integration process faces a serious problem in lack of trust and interest of citizen in it, but Czech politicians are to blame for extreme lack of knowledge about the EU among Czech citizen.”

“From the European point of view, five major political europarties have put forward a candidate for the president of the European Commission. This move was supposed to show 400 million EU voters that they can choose a person who would lead the European executive. Nevertheless, most of the national parties have not put the europarty candidate in the middle of their national campaign.

In 2009, the turnout was 43 percent. We don’t know exact numbers yet, but is looks like that this attempt has failed to attract significant number of voters. In other words, there is a lack of real debate on EU topics in member states since national parties do not prioritize EU agenda in their rhetoric and programs and europarties are weak and unable to reach voters with topics which are being dealt in the EP.”

The coordinator of this project is the European Values Think-Tank, a Prague-based non-partisan public policy institute, together with the League of Human Rights, advocacy NGO based in Brno. The main donor of the project is the Open Society Foundations (Think Tank Fund).

The Problem

In recent years, we have witnessed a rise in influence of the extremist and populist parties and their leaders in Europe. The extremists gain media and political space from the fact that mainstream political parties ignore immigration and minorities-integration agenda. The lack of sufficient political communication is the main reason why populists and extremists dominate the public debate about these issues and why they are even often perceived by the voters as more competent to solve the related problems.

What do we want to do with it?

As a result of the first part of our project, we have recently published a comprehensive monograph POLITICS AND POLICIES OF INTEGRATION IN AUSTRIA, HUNGARY, CZECHIA, DENMARK AND AT THE EU LEVEL. Politicians and party experts from centre-right and centre-left parties in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria and Poland will be separately provided with trainings and very practical tailor-made recommendations on how to communicate the sensitive issues of integration of immigrants and minorities to the public in order to marginalize chances of the extremist parties to control this issues agenda.

When?

Five National Seminars

Public discussions, expert roundtable and closed meetings in five Central European capitals aim to get national experts involved in further specification of recommendation created during the first part of the project.

Two Regional Seminars

Outcomes of the national seminars will be used for preparation of materials for workshops/trainings performed during the regional seminars.

Which parties will be addressed?

Without concrete improvements and results stemming from practical day-to-day policies, we cannot expect long term trust in the society and successful integration on a broader scale. We again focus on genuine measures that could be ideally employed by politicians of both side of the mainstream. We are aware that it is not possible to provide useful recommendations for centre-left and centre-right parties together; therefore we have decided to split political subjects according to their political profiling.

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